Facing Reality
by Brainyuck
Summary: In his mind, a madman's thoughts are just as good as reality. One-shot.


Hello everybody.

I decided to go for something different today.

This idea has been in my head for quite some time and I couldn't really help but write it down. It's a rather sobering explanation for the events of the Lorien Legacies series in form of a one-shot. I only slightly touch on the point of this story, so you may have to think it through yourself.

Final words before I let you get to it: I didn't explicitly write this so you'd like it, so please don't feel angry if you don't :)

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"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time." - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

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**FACING REALITY**

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'Please don't recognize me, please don't recognize me, please…' Henri thought as he walked past the receptionist of the small hospital. 'Please, please, please-'

"HENRI!" the small woman shouted after him and he froze. "Henri Smith, is that you?"

Henri closed his eyes and let out a quiet sigh, then he turned around, putting on the most unrepulsive smile he could manage.

"Paula," he greeted her with his fake grin and walked back through the entire lobby to shake her hand. "How are you?"

"Good, I'm good. Had to call in sick 'cause of my back last week, but it's all good now," she said and laid both her hands on her hips. "How about you. Haven't seen you here in a while."

Henri faked a shy laugh. God, those people made him sick.

"Yes, it's not easy to find time nowadays," he said and the receptionist laughs

"Honey, you have no idea. Just recently, I met a friend of mine walking down the street and – oh, a doctor, by the way, adorable young man – and anyway, I'm walking down the street, and he comes walking towards me, and then he's like 'I'm really in a hurry', and I'm…"

"Speaking of which," Henri interrupted her and turned to leave. "I really have to go now." He didn't mean to be rude, he just didn't have the time for pointless conversations.

"Yes, yes," the woman mumbled, obviously not having listened to what he'd just said. "Anyway, where was I?" she scratched her head and her long, blonde-dyed curls bobbed up and down. "Damn, Henri, now I forgot what I was about to say."

Oh no, what a tragedy.

"Anyway, how's your wife doing?"

"Still dead," Henri replied in a hoarse tone and the woman looked at him in surprise.

"Really? Oh, Henri, I'm so sorry. You know, my cousin's daughter's husband died a week ago, and we're all so sad now, and if only…" Henri just stared at her as she continued talking. Her small, lipstick-covered mouth just didn't seem to stop opening and closing.

She had a rather big head and an almost non-existent neck. This combined with the pink suit she was wearing somehow reminded him of a big, wriggling thumb.

He raised his own thumb to compare it with the woman, who was still blabbering on about someone she knew who knew someone ho knew someone. Yes, they really did have certain similarities. If he hadn't been wearing his glasses, he probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between his finger and her.

Henri lowered his arm again and made a polite "mhm" to show her he was still listening. Not that she would care, anyway.

He watched the small hand on his wrist watch make two and a half turns, then he decided it was time to leave and just walked away without a word.

The receptionist kept on talking for a full minute until she realized he had stepped into one of the lifts. When she finally noticed, she shrugged, mumbled "what a nice man," and went back to work.

"What a horrible woman," Henri grumbled as he pressed the fourth floor button on the elevator. The doors quietly closed, and he leaned backwards against the wall, closing his eyes.

A moment of silence, a moment to gather his thoughts.

No matter how annoying the receptionist may have acted, she had been right about one thing. He really hadn't visited very often lately. In fact, Henri hadn't seen his son in more than half a year.

Why, you ask?

Of course, he really didn't have much spare time ever since his wife had died. Even now, when he closed his eyes, the memories of how he had found her in the bathtub that morning haunted him, her mouth wide open, her hands cramped up over her chest.

Heart attack, the doctors had said. Acute myocardial infarction. One moment, you're still breathing, still thinking, a normal human being with hopes, with dreams, with your whole life ahead of you. And then, boom, it's all gone, as if it never mattered in the first place. Like you were nothing more than a candle in the wind, under the constant threat of just being blown out.

Henri had been forced to work night shifts to be able to pay the hospital bills, there hadn't been much time to mourn. Mourning wouldn't earn the money they needed. He had started working the weekends, taking up a part time job as a waiter in a local restaurant.

Seeing the joyful faces of the customers sometimes made him forget what a nightmare his own life had turned into.

Sometimes. Rarely. Almost never, to be honest.

When he got home dead tired in the mornings, all he would think about was his bed and a couple of hours of sleep before he'd go back to work.

Once a month, he'd find time to go to the park for one or two hours and feed the little ducklings with dry bread he got from the restaurant. 'Take it,' he would then scream at them. 'Take everything I got.'

That was his version of psychological therapy. He didn't have the money nor the time for real one.

But why didn't he visit his son more often instead of yelling at ducks, you ask? Two hours each month would be better spent at his son's hospital bed rather than on a lonely park bench.

Well, Henri didn't want to admit it, but he was afraid of John.

A quiet bell announced the lift's arrival at the third floor and Henri sighed absent-mindedly. One more floor.

The doors slowly slid open, and a flush of cheerful cries, snickering laughs and loud chattering echoed through the hallway outside the elevator. As he looked up, a group of thirty little kids, not older than five or six, stared back at him. For a second, the small crowd of children went silent, curiously eyeing the man standing in front of them. Then, after realizing there was nothing interesting about the overworked, tired-looking mid-aged guy in the elevator, they exploded back into loud blabbering.

Henri smiled a weary smile as they slowly came waddling inside. It reminded him of what John used to be like back when he still was a little kid. Before the incident. He was such a cute, happy little fellah back then, playing with his toy cars, digging in the dirt, always up to something.

They had been so proud.

A woman about his age gently pushed the last few kids into the overly cramped elevator and then entered herself. She glanced at Henri as the doors closed behind her, an apologizing smile on her lips.

"It's their first field trip," she yelled over the common noise the kids were making.

"It's alright," he mumbled back, even though he was sure she couldn't hear him. It had been a long time since he'd seen so many excited faces at once. He still remembered the day of his son's first field trip. John had been talking about how great it was going to be all week long, and he sometimes wouldn't even fall asleep at night because he was so enthusiastic.

A sudden tug at his sleeve ripped him out of his thoughts. When he looked down, a little girl was staring back up at him with big, round eyes.

"Hey, Sir," she shouted loudly, even though he was standing right next to her. "You a cray-cray-man?"

Henri tried laughing. It didn't work out. "A what?"

"A cray-cray-man," the girl repeated moving her hands up and down with each 'cray'. "You know, Sir, A cray-cray-cray-man."

"Ella, leave the man alone," the woman ordered from the other end of the lift. The girl glanced at her, made a disappointed pout and then continued stare at Henri.

"That's the fourth floor," the woman announced as the bell rang and the doors slid open once again. "Come on, kids." She motioned the children to exit the lift. Henri followed after the little girl who was still holding on to his sleeve.

"Sorry about that," the woman said to him as he walked past her. "They're really excited to see the… mentally confused people."

Henri gave her a tired nod while wondering to himself why anyone would take little kids to a mental hospital for a field trip.

He stepped into the corridor outside the elevator, where a doctor in a white lab coat was already explaining the structure of the hospital to the group of kids.

The girl let go off his sleeve.

"… where patients can wash their own laundry, if they want to," the doctor was just saying. "That's also where prepare and dose the medicine for our patients." The children all looked at him with their mouths gaping wide open, taking in every word he was saying, turning their heads when he pointed in certain directions, asking questions about pretty much everything there was to know in a hospital.

Henri sighed. John used to be like that, too. Back when everything was still alright. Back when his life still had a point.

"And this," the doctor concluded, pointing at the hallway they were standing in. "This is the psychiatric-ward." Excited whispers ran through the crowd of children. "That's where we keep our most… difficult patients. The ones who suffer from the more serious, incurable mental diseases."

Henri pressed his lips together.

"Now, children, we'll all head over to room number 12, where Miss Goode will take you through the day of a nurse and tell you some really awesome stories about some of our patients. Sounds good?" the man said and the children yelled in approval. Henri wondered if that was even legal. "But before we do, you need to remember, the patients in this section are very, very sick. Some of them get upset really quickly, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?" The kids all shook their heads. "Alright, so let's all try to be as quiet as possible while we walk down the hallway. Can you do that?"

The kids nodded silently and started tiptoeing down the corridor after the doctor, quickly followed by the woman. The doctor led them all the way to the last door of the hallway and one after the other, the little group of visitors entered room number 12, where their guided tour would continue.

Henri watched them all disappear from the corridor until he was all alone again. He hadn't noticed, but a small smile had somehow found its way onto his lips at the thought of John's childhood. This smile quickly faded away now, though, replaced by a long thin line of concern. What would John say when they'd meet after more than six months? Would he even recognize Henri anymore?

He took a deep breath and started walking in the opposite direction of where the small group of visitors had gone.

His footsteps echoed off the bright white walls as he strolled past the few closed doors on his way. Each of them had a big, red number painted on it, he had no idea why. He just found the colour oddly disturbing, it almost looked like the numbers were drawn using blood instead of paint.

'It calms our patients down,' Doctor Ra, John's shrink had once told Henri. 'Red helps them focus.'

Henri had always thought it was the other way around. But then again, he wasn't the one with a psychological degree.

He stopped in front of the door with the big number four on it and sighed loudly. This was it. After all this time, he would face his son again.

Henri wasn't sure if he was ready.

He laid his hand on the door handle.

Not ready for John's reaction.

He took one last deep breath, shortly thought about knocking, then just opened the door.

Expecting John to jump at him.

Instead, the room was completely empty, except for Miss Walker, the nurse responsible for John. When Henri entered, she flinched and got up so quickly she knocked over the plastic stool she had been sitting on.

"Oh, Henri, it's you. You startled me," she said, breathing heavily.

"Sorry," Henri murmured and gave her another one of his fake, weary smiles. "How are you, Miss Walker? Is the boy causing much trouble?"

The nurse glanced at him with a what appeared to be concern and… was that reproach in her eyes?

"To be honest, yes. Yes, it got worse." She hesitated. "He… he thinks you're dead."

Henri blinked in surprise.

"Dead?"

"Yes, quite so, I'm afraid. Keeps talking about how Mogadorians killed you and how he will avenge your death."

Henri felt like there was a lump stuck in his throat.

"Moga…What?"

"Mogadorians. He says they are evil aliens that destroyed his home. No, his home planet," the nurse corrected herself. Henri gulped.

"Why…What would make him think I'm dead?"

"You know what he's like. He didn't see you for a few months," she shot him a – yup, definitely – reproachful look, "so he assumed the worst. And he wasn't the only one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, slightly upset. The woman came forward from behind John's hospital bed to look Henri right in the eye.

"What kind of father would leave his mentally instable son in a hospital for an entire half a year without visiting once? Not even once!" the nurse snubbed and put her finger right in his face. "That's not something a loving father would do, Mister Smith. That's not something any father would do. What would your wife think of you?"

Henri blinked.

What had she just said? What the hell did she just say? Who did this woman think she was to judge him? Who did she think she was to mention Julliane? What did it matter to her if he came to visit or not?

He searched for the anger inside him, searched for the emotions he had kept locked away for so long, searched for something to throw at the nurse, but he somehow couldn't. Couldn't find anything. He was empty inside. There was nothing to get angry about, because Miss Walker was right. He was a lumpy father. But there wasn't even regret about that inside him, there was just a grey, thick sadness.

He was tired. No, he was more than tired. He was literally sick of it all.

You stop living for too long and the emptiness inside of your soul starts spreading.

"Where is he?" Henri managed to say without his voice cracking. "Where's John now?"

"Doctor Ra took him for a walk in the backyard," the nurse answered with unmistakable contempt in her voice. "Said some fresh air would do him good. They should be back any minute now. Why, what do you care, Henri?"

Her eyes sparkled with anger.

Henri cleared his throat.

"Do you mind if I… stay here until…" he stammered.

"Go on, it's not my decision…" the nurse replied reluctantly. "But if I were your son, I wouldn't want to have you here."

Without another word, she turned on her heels, picked up the knocked-over stool and sat back down, leaving Henri alone with his thoughts.

With his conscience.

Henri just kept standing in the doorframe, the door slowly closing in his face, staring at the nurse.

Stood there like a broken man.

Just stood there like an empty, hollow case of a man.

And didn't feel anything.

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Hope you all made it through after all. I think I'll leave it at this... I don't know.

Please review


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